Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible
How do you decide which aspects of the Bible to follow, and which to ignore?
Justin Taylor posted a video of a young woman posing this question to Dr. John Stackhouse, Religious Studies Professor at Crandall University, New Brunswick. Stackhouse turns the question around to suggest that we should study the Bible closely enough to understand it before attempting to claim there are parts we should ignore.
The two-minute video is well worth your time. Check it out!
If you’re studying Kings, Chronicles, or one of the Prophets, the Good Book Company has an infographic you might want to check out. They list all the kings of Israel and Judah, color-coded to represent the text’s evaluation of their obedience to God. The infographic also shows the Hebrew prophets and where their prophecies fit into the timeline. It’s clean, attractive, and very helpful.
Though God’s Holy Spirit breathed out the very words of Scripture (2 Tim 3:16-17), he did so through the skills and creativity of human authors (2 Pet 1:21). And as the generations passed, and the original readers of a Bible book had come and gone, scribes would update the text to make sense for a new era.
This fact is not something Bible-believing Christians should fear or cover up. It does not threaten the doctrines of inspiration or inerrancy. If God can speak through human authors, he can also speak through human editors. Some alleged errors or inconsistencies in the Bible can be reasonably explained through this editorial process.
We understand the practice today. It often takes as few as 10 years for a publisher to release a “revised and updated” second edition of a successful book. This doesn’t necessarily mean the first edition was in error, but that when times change, some things need updating. Important ancient literature worked the same way.
Writing for Bible Study Magazine, Michael Heiser speaks of such evidence of “upgrading” in Genesis 14 and Psalm 51. We could find many further examples where terminology, people or place names, or turns of phrase must have been updated for later generations. God wants people to know him through his word. His word will last forever, and his main points don’t change, but the text must always be translated and explained for each new generation and culture.
Heiser gives two reasons why details may have been updated over time:
Heiser’s brief article gives a few examples and much worth considering. Check it out!
Writing at the Stand to Reason blog, Greg Koukl explains what he believes to be the most important skill for Bible-believing Christians:
If there was one bit of wisdom, one rule of thumb, one single skill I could impart, one useful tip I could leave that would serve you well the rest of your life, what would it be? What is the single most important practical skill I’ve ever learned as a Christian?
Here it is: Never read a Bible verse. That’s right, never read a Bible verse. Instead, always read a paragraph at least.
Koukl goes on to explain a simple method for clarifying the meaning of any verse: paraphrase it in your own words, then read the surrounding paragraph with the inserted paraphrase. Demonstrating this method, Koukl debunks popular but false readings of quotable verses:
Koukl’s great article will challenge you never to read a Bible verse apart from the paragraph surrounding it. And I highly recommend this practice.
HT: Justin Taylor
Check out this webcomic at Adam4d.com proving that we must reconsider our diet. He illustrates his point well: We can “prove” anything from the Bible, with a careful sampling of verses taken out of context. Would you be able to refute such an argument?
HT: Tom Hallman
Last week I had the privilege to join a live panel discussion about Bible study for ordinary people on Innovate 4 Jesus live. Joining me was Rebecca Van Noord, editor-in-chief of Bible Study Magazine, and Nate Smoyer, Team Lead of Partnerships and Advertising of Faithlife, makers of Logos Bible Software.
Over the course of the hour, we hit many topics, such as:
This discussion was surreal for me, as Bible Study Magazine is my favorite magazine. It was so much fun to have this discussion with Rebecca Van Noord, BSM’s editor-in-chief. I see her photo inside the cover of every issue, and there she was for me to interact with!
Check it out!
In DiscipleMakers, we train our collegiate missionaries to both master and be mastered by the Scriptures. One exercise we use involves chapter summaries. Within their first three years, new missionaries are expected to read the entire Bible and create a list of summaries for every chapter. Though there’s a difference between a summary and a main point, we need to master the “what” of Scripture before we can be mastered by its “why.”
In 2014, Pastor Gregg Peter Farah blogged his way through every chapter of the Bible, summarizing each chapter in one or two words. You can find the results on his blog.
Along with the two-word summary, he included a one-sentence “big idea” and a brief “next step” attempting to apply the chapter. While Farah’s extreme brevity occasionally misses the mark, I think much of the time he absolutely nails it. For example:
Ephesians 2
SUMMARY
Incomparable richesBIG IDEA
The more we grow in our faith the more we will see and understand God’s outrageous love for us.NEXT STEP
Keep growing and going with Jesus. Have a hunger to know him more and be ready to be overwhelmed by his blessings.
Remember, he is summarizing (observing), not interpreting. So his Old Testament summaries don’t say much about Christ or the gospel. This often leads his application to be not as rich as it could be. But for brief, clear statements of what each chapter says, Farah does well.
The blog format can be difficult to follow, requiring much scrolling to find particular chapters. But if you use his search bar (upper right) to find “Bible summary [name of Bible book]”, you’ll make it easier.
Check it out!
P.S. For DiscipleMakers staff: No plagiarizing these great summaries!
HT: Jeffrey Kranz
Until July 14, Crossway is giving away Taking God at His Word by Kevin DeYoung as a free ebook. This book is a short, clear, and powerful explanation of what the Bible says about the Bible. If you read ebooks, you should get this one.
Download it from Crossway by completing their short questionnaire and joining their mailing list here. (You can always unsubscribe if you don’t want their emails, right?)
You can find my review of the book here.
The debate on same-sex marriage rages not only in the U.S. government but also within the church. Confusion abounds regarding whether God approves or opposes same-sex unions.
Last month, The New York Times took a few of the key Bible verses used in the debate, along with explanations from a proponent for each side. This article is not the final word on the topic. It doesn’t necessarily represent the most sound articulation of either viewpoint. But it shows us, without a doubt, how critical the Scriptures are to the debate. One cannot truly claim to follow God without submitting to his word.
But how do we know if we’re interpreting it correctly?
The article touches on Romans 1:26-27, Leviticus 18:22, Matthew 19:3-6, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.
Are these teachers reading each passage in context? Have they observed carefully enough? Are they doing justice to the authors’ main points? Is their application sound?
Read, study, and consider. How would you respond to each? (Please note: Trollish comments, or those that don’t address the Scriptures, will be deleted.)
Erik Raymond has another insightful article this week about how to prevent a gospel-centered fizzle out. He’s concerned for the next generation of Christian pastors and Bible teachers, and he’s wondering whether we’ll be able to replicate the great teaching we’ve been hearing for a generation. Will we learn not only how to repeat what we’ve been told, but also to draw new conclusions from the same old texts on our own?
It’s one thing to have been able to say you have been to the restaurant and eaten a meal, but, if you don’t know how to get there yourself then you’ll never be able to eat that food again, much less take someone else out to enjoy the same experiences. My concern is that too many have been piling into Sproul’s theological minivan to go eat a feast but never learned how to actually find their way to the meal.
He writes of how important it is for us to learn to read, interpret, and rightly apply the Bible on our own. I couldn’t agree more.
